The Cell Membrane Invalidates Claims of The Theory of Evolution

Evolutionist Myths Concerning the Origin of Life

According to Darwinist scenarios, the first living cell arose in a "primordial soup," a liquid environment where certain organic molecules co-existed. Many Darwinists suggest that this primordial soup was oceans or lake. In the scenario, simple organic molecules in the primordial soup formed amino acids, which later turned into molecules able to copy themselves by forming proteins. But there is no evidence for this tale of chemical evolution whose different versions have been defended for the last 100 years. No such process has ever been observed. Furthermore, it is now known that the atmosphere's general structure is unsuited for the formation of amino acids, the simplest building blocks of life, and that for proteins to come into being by coincidence is mathematically impossible. However, Darwinists refuse to accept Creation and continue to believe in this chemical evolution story.

... Cells are simply too complex to have evolved randomly ... Darwin's theory encounters its greatest difficulties when it comes to explaining the development of the cell. —Michael Behe

According to their scenario, which lacks any scientific foundation, the cell membrane—which would protect the first organic molecules and other cell organelles that formed the basis of the primordial cell—must all have come into being spontaneously, simultaneously.

The Cell Membrane's Selective Permeability Cannot Be Explained By Any Random Process. That Feature Is The Flawless Artistry That Our Omniscient Lord Manifests In All Beings.

Of vital importance to all life is the way the cell membrane recognizes the external environment, identifies the cell's needs, can distinguish whether substances about to enter the cell are harmful and never makes a mistake during that selection. Clearly, coincidental chemical reactions and physical laws could never provide the membrane of unconscious fats and proteins, with such conscious selectivity.
1. Cell membrane

Statements made by the evolutionist biologist Hoimar von Ditfurth are an example of Darwinists' biased views on this subject:

... the cell has to seal itself against the outside world on the one hand, while keeping itself open to it on the other ... The way to establish a border that is both open and closed is by forming a highly "specialized" connection equipped with very great abilities. That connection must be ... able to perform selective and discriminatory functions. The substances and level of energy needed by the cell must be easily transmitted, and yet chemical processes taking place in the cell must remain unaffected by instabilities and fluctuations in the outside world; they should not reach such levels that suppress and impair these processes. To put it another way, the cell has to be able to determine the various and different characteristics of the outside world and natural environment and to make selections among them. So long as external agents, whether they be in the form of matter or energy, are not included in the list of necessary items for the survival of the cell, the cell must be capable of excluding them ...

In fact, the task that the cell (or evolution, to be more accurate) is presented for resolution defines a paradoxical relationship. But unless it had been resolved, because of the chemical and physical causes known to us, there could have been no life at all. Since we are alive today and matters have progressed as far as they have, evolution must have found a way out of this dilemma ...

The solution found by evolution, or rather the concession, was to develop the "semi-impermeable" cell membrane as a cell coating. It also needs to be said that the term "semi-impermeable" goes nowhere near expressing the astonishing abilities of the very thin membrane. In fact, we cannot pass by without saying that the term semi-permeable fails to fully reflect those astonishing abilities and skills of the thin cell membrane. 82

Attempts To Show That The Complex Creation In The Cell Came About As The Results Of Coincidence Are A Waste Of Time

Scientists who misdirected research by regarding claims of coincidence as a scientific approach have caused the delay of the many benefits that science can impart to mankind, and knowledge, time and material resources have been squandered on empty objectives. They invested fortunes to answer the question, "Could the perfect order in the universe have come about by coincidence?" But on every occasion, they encountered the marvels in Allah's creative artistry from an ever closer perspective, by obtaining new proofs confirming the impossibility of random effects.

In referring to the complex, conscious selection mechanisms in the cell membrane, this well-known evolutionist also engages in forced evolutionary explanations. Offering no evidence at all, his approach is basically "Since we are alive today evolution must have emerged from this apparently contradictory state of affairs." His statements also constitute a significant example of evolutionists' poor scientific logic. Instead of drawing conclusions in the light of known findings, evolutionists regard the theory as irrefutable dogma. Von Ditfurth's statements might begin in a clearer form, thus: "Since we are alive, and have made it clear from the outset that we will accept no other explanation than the theory of evolution. . ." Once again, it emerges that the sole basis for the theory of evolution is not scientific proof, but a belief held for philosophical reasons.

Evolutionists perform experiments on the cell membrane, fondly dreaming that it might have come into being by chance. Despite invalid experiments that fail to square with scientific data, they still make evolutionist interpretations. In one experiment performed with that aim in mind, a group of researchers from the University of California, directed by university graduate student Charles Apel, maintained that in fresh water in a laboratory environment, they had obtained membrane-structured blebs, structures that proved that life could appear spontaneously in fresh waters.83 These claims are unscientific, however, nothing more than biased interpretations put forward in the light of evolutionists' preconceptions. We shall examine the reasons for this in detail in the following pages.

The Membrane Produced in the Laboratory is Not as Complex as the Cell Membrane

Up to this point evolutionists have maintained that life emerged in the oceans, in salt waters. Yet in experiments carried out in salt waters, no membrane ever appeared. Fresh water was used in Apel's experiment, and obtained blebs with a membranous structure.

That these were obtained in the laboratory offers no support for the theory that the DNA, the cell, or the organelles and proteins within it formed spontaneously in water.

1. The laboratory membrane does not possess the features of the cell membrane. Of course, certain chemical and physical effects can align molecules in water, depending on whether they are hydrophilic or hydrophobic.). Yet this membrane bears no resemblance to the cell membrane, because the cell membrane has selective permeability between the inside and outside of the cell and possesses the complex gate systems to make this possible.

Evolutionists, however, portray the cell membrane and molecules like DNA as simple structures and thus suggest that these structures came into being by chance. That is why they seek to depict the simple membrane produced in the laboratory as the first stage in this far more complex structure. However it is impossible for the membrane obtained in the laboratory to evolve into the cell membrane over the course of time. In order to see this, consider just one of the many attributes of the cell membrane.

- The cell membrane, just 1/100,000th of a millimeter thick, recognizes countless chemical substances in the extra-cellular environment, and takes in only those needed for continuing organelle functions and cell survive. It possesses an extraordinary capacity for recognition.

- It is most economical. The cell never admits any more than the amount it actually needs.

- The cell also recognizes the harmful waste products inside it and loses no time in getting rid of them.

- An exchange of very large molecules sometimes takes place into and outside the cell membrane. In that case, their passage is ensured with no harm befalling the membrane. The cell forms small sacs from its own membrane, through which storage and transportation are carried out. In the process known as pinocytosis, part of the cell membrane bends inwards, and large molecules on the outside enter this hollow. This hollow contracts inwards, and a sac is formed that is drawn into the cell. In a sense, the cell swallows the substances it needs.

- In the process known as exocytosis, the cell forms a sac inside itself, fills it with waste products, then expels this sac through the cell membrane. Substances in the sac are thus released into the external environment.

In order for the cell membrane, consisting of fat molecules, to perform all of these processes, it must know all the activities and developments inside the cell, produce a list of all necessary or harmful substances, keep stocks under control, and maintain a superior memory and decision-making ability. In addition, it must also develop a system for transporting large molecules without harming them, and to form itself accordingly. It is impossible for coincidence to organize unconscious molecules flawlessly and construct an extraordinarily complex system. Even scientists, who possess millions of dollars' worth of equipment and the most advanced technology, are able to produce only a membrane that has no function and resembles an envelope with a few molecules inside. How could unconscious molecules and coincidence succeed where scientists have failed?

That is Allah, your Lord. The Kingdom is His. Those you call on besides Him have no power over even the smallest speck.
(Surah Fatir, 13)

Keeping the legacy of Darwin going, evolutionists continued to assert that living beings advanced by themselves from a so-called primordial cell. They also assumed that the first cell emerged from an environment, which they called, the "primordial soup" by chance. Having this dogmatic faith, they made countless experiments for years. However all their efforts proved to be failure. That is because, let alone the formation of a living cell by chance, it is impossible to form a cell by chance even in the most advanced laboratories of the world.

In order for the cell membrane, consisting of fat molecules, to perform all of these processes, it must know all the activities and developments inside the cell, produce a list of all necessary or harmful substances, keep stocks under control, and maintain a superior memory and decision-making ability. In addition, it must also develop a system for transporting large molecules without harming them, and to form itself accordingly. It is impossible for coincidence to organize unconscious molecules flawlessly and construct an extraordinarily complex system. Even scientists, who possess millions of dollars' worth of equipment and the most advanced technology, are able to produce only a membrane that has no function and resembles an envelope with a few molecules inside. How could unconscious molecules and coincidence succeed where scientists have failed?

2. The formation of the cell membrane is hardly the only subject for which evolutionists can provide no explanation. They allege that the primordial cell membrane formed in the primordial soup, after which molecules in that membrane turned into exceedingly complex molecules capable of replicating themselves. Yet they do not explain how that might have happened. Even prominent evolutionists admit that such an evolution is impossible. One of these, Dr. Leslie Orgel, an evolutionary biochemist from the California Salk Institute, says:

Pre-biotic soup is easy to obtain. We must next explain how a pre-biotic soup of organic molecules, including amino acids and the organic constituents of nucleotides evolved into a self replication organism... I must admit that attempts to reconstruct this evolutionary process are extremely tentative. 84

Each of the structures and organelles that make up the cell possesses very complex features. The probability of any one of these emerging by chance is zero. Indeed, scientists' efforts for decades have all ended in failure. Not even the smallest component of the cell can be replicated and constructed in the laboratory.

Darwinists' Attempts to Portray the Cell Membrane as a Simple Structure

Darwinists claimed that the cell membrane could have come into being spontaneously as the product of coincidence. Actually, however, the cell membrane is so complex that even with all their advanced technological means, scientists have been unable to replicate a membrane-like structure with selective permeability. Therefore, not only has research invalidated claims of coincidence, but it also reveals the fact of Creation in the cell.

Another study that fell into error, an experiment carried out by a group of researchers at NASA's Ames Research Institute maintained that these structures possessed the features of membranous structures found in all living things. When the content of the experiment is examined, however, it's clear that the structures that emerged definitely did not have the same properties as those of a living cell membrane. The microscopic balloons that emerged as a result of this study can immediately be recognized to be structures physically very different from the cell membrane.

First, the balloons produced have a fatty structure consisting of a single layer. Every living cell membrane has a lipid structure consisting of two layers, the product of a common Creation. In the original paper, dated 30 January 2001 and published in the US National Academy of Science journal PNAS, the chemical structures were described as single layered soap bubble.85 No claim was made that the products of the experiment, described as amphiphilic (likening two different environments) because of their properties, were actually organic. As every biologist closely acquainted with the cell knows, the functions and organelles that make the life of the cell possible are extraordinarily complex. It is not yet possible for them to be produced or replicated by human beings. This experiment, in fact, once again made apparent the matchless structure of the cell membrane. It emerged that the cell membrane's double-layered lipid property could not be replicated even by the efforts and knowledge of dozens of scientists.

Professor Werner Gitt, until recently a professor at the Federal German Physics and Technology Institute and head of the Information Technology Department, says this:

The biological energy conversion system has been so amazingly and rationally designed that energy engineers are able to do no more than look on, spellbound. Nobody to date has been able to replicate such a miniature but exceedingly efficient mechanism. 86

To be able to speak of a molecular chain possessing the membranous structures found in living things, it is essential that the cell's selective-permeable functions be replicated. Yet the results obtained in the laboratory—with an enormous budget and a human workforce and knowledge—went no further than producing sac-like blebs.

Faced with the structure of the cell, whose origin they are totally unable to account for, Darwinists try to reduce its complexity from the debate and to depict the cell as simple as possible. Yet their efforts are bearing no results. Despite being a well-known evolutionist, W.H. Thorpe has admitted that the cell is not simple at all: "The most elementary type of cell constitutes a mechanism unimaginably more complex than any machine yet through up, let alone constructed, by man." 87

The membrane's function is not solely to enclose the cell. This membrane, giving the cell life with its vital functions, is the cell's brain in terms of its superior abilities, memory and the intelligence it displays. As touched on in earlier chapters, this membrane resembles a double-sided wall of fat molecules facing both inwards and outwards. Gates between these fat particle permit entry to and exit from the cell, and receptors permit the membrane to recognize the extracellular environment. These doors and receptors are composed of protein molecules. Located within the cell wall, they carefully supervise all entry to and departure from the cell.

Both East and West belong to Allah, so wherever you turn, the Face of Allah is there. Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.
(Surat al-Baqara, 115)

Do you not know that Allah is He to Whom the kingdom of the heavens and the Earth belongs and that, besides Allah, you have no protector and no helper?
(Surat al-Baqara, 107)

To be able to maintain that living structures came about by coincidence, Darwinists first portray life as simple. In light of the scientific facts, however, life is actually exceedingly complex and has nothing to do with simplicity. Far from demonstrating coincidence emergence, experiments reveal that life cannot be replicated even by the advanced technology. Scientific findings, including this NASA experiment, refute the Darwinists' theory that life is the product of coincidence and confirm the fact of Creation. Almighty Allah, the All-Knowing Lord of infinite might, has created all living things, from the cell to human beings. In one verse, Allah reveals:

"Say: "Have you thought about those you call upon apart from Allah ? Show me what they have created on the Earth."" (Surat al-Ahqaf, 4)

He to Whom the kingdom of the heavens and the Earth belongs. He does not have a son and He has no partner in the Kingdom. He created everything and determined it most exactly.
(Surat al-Furqan, 2)

Unable to Account for the Origin of Life, Darwinists Hope for a Solution from Space

Darwinist scientists, unable to obtain a cell membrane by artificial means, have sought an extraterrestrial solution. Some have referred to intergalactic substances to explain the origin of the double-layered compounds comprising the cell membrane.88 It was initially determined that carbon-containing meteors possessed compounds consisting of long hydrocarbon chains. Those who made these claims imagined that they'd found proof of their other claims. But subsequent analyses demonstrated that these compounds had formed after contact with the Earth. Recent laboratory experiments also support the view that amphiphilic substances have an earthly origin. 89

Darwinist researchers maintain that these compounds may be the first components of the cell membrane, and that when the right compounds emerged, then double-layered membranes could have arisen spontaneously. They assume that after primordial membranes formed, they became double-layered membranes consisting of phospholipids. These evolutionary models consist of gross simplifications. Darwinist researchers claim that the primordial membranes of the first cells consisted of aromatic hydrocarbons combined with octanoic and nonanoic acids.

These views are deceptive, however. Octanoic and nonanoic acids can form double layers only when present in very high concentrations.90 This is incompatible with the primordial environment scenarios hypothesized by Darwinists. In order for octanoic and nonanoic acids to form double-layered membranes, therefore, they need powerful environmental conditions, at specific pH levels.91 If the solute's pH level departs from neutral values, then those double-layered membranes remain unstable. The temperature of the solution is also of enormous importance for the stability of double-layered membranes,92 and the stability of octanoic and nonanoic double layers also depends on the substances with the right molecular structure. For example, only of nonanol is included at a particular stage, then nonanoic acid double-layered membranes become stable. 93

That these exacting prerequisites arrived by means of meteors or comets, and then constituted the first cell membrane, is as impossible as it is for a river to flow uphill. All the various preconditions need to be met at the same time. If a double-layered membrane does form, the smallest changes in the surrounding conditions may cause it to lose stability and break down into micelles (the smallest molecular fragments in a solution) of no biological significance.

1. HEAT
2. Gelatinous density
3. Fluid density

When the temperature of the cell membrane's phospholipid structure changes by a few degrees, it immediately undergoes an alteration. This change spells the degeneration of some cells. Heat is just one of the countless preconditions for the cell's survival. Bearing in mind the sensitivity of these balances, the illogical claims of coincidence become even more apparent.

After the first phospholipids appear, therefore, the cell membrane's systems do not come together spontaneously. Some phospholipids produce only structures consisting of a single, double-layered membrane—and then under laboratory conditions, with the intervention and supervision of scientists. When formed in this manner, double-layered single membrane masses form hollow, spherical structures known as liposomes, which can survive for only short periods. Their stability is brief, and they gradually dissolve and merge together. 94

For example, when human red blood cells are kept above 37 °C (normal body temperature), they begin to deform. As a result of the phospholipid compound in the cell membrane changing, unhealthy compounds begin to emerge. Professor Norman Gershfield, a researcher at the National Institute of Health in the 1980s and 1990s, discovered that it was possible for cell membranes to form and to protect structures under specific conditions only and the physical and chemical conditions had to be adjusted with the greatest sensitivity.95 It is impossible for the physical processes active when the Earth first formed to have produced a chemically stable cell membrane. Even if random effects gave rise to the proper phospholipid compound, any variation in temperature in the cell membrane would ruin its structure. With that loss, the first cell would disappear.

As you see, the sensitivity of the cell membrane invalidates any scenarios proposed for the beginning of life and reveal the proofs of Allah's Creation at every stage. The formation of biological membranes and the absolute conditions that must be met for them to survive make it impossible for them to have come about naturally.

No scientist has discovered how to produce a cell from inanimate substances. Professor Klaus Dose, head of the Johannes Gutenberg University Biochemistry Institute, who has researched the origin of life, expresses the problem:

More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth, rather than to its solution. At present, all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance ... Considerable disagreements between scientists have arisen about detailed evolutionary steps. The problem is that the principal evolutionary processes from prebiotic molecules to progenotes have not been proven by experimentation, and that the environmental conditions under which these processes occurred are not known ... It appears that the field has now reached a stage of stalemate, a stage in which hypothetical arguments often dominate over facts based on experimentation or observation.96

The claim that "If earthly conditions were unsuitable, then the first cell came from space," is invalid. What makes it fundamentally impossible for the first cell to appear spontaneously is the cell's extraordinarily complex organization. No matter where one may go in outer space, the physical, chemical and mathematical laws that make it impossible for a cell to emerge by coincidence will never change. It is just as impossible for stones to produce a 10-storey building by randomly piling on top of one another. The scenario of the chance formation of the cell is equally impossible on any other planet in the universe.

The cell consists of a great many organelles, each with complex structures of their own. The cell membrane allows specific compounds to enter or leave the cell, identifying substances that are harmful and refusing to admit them. Inside the cell are found the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA that contain all the information for life. These structures contain incomparably more information than even a large library. In the cell are also protein-producing ribosomes that use hundreds of proteins, all with different functions. The complexity of every component is quite extraordinary, yet none of these components serves any purpose on its own, and the cell cannot survive in the absence of any one. Therefore, the cell needs all its many organelles and components right from the outset. It is impossible, as the evolution theory would have us believe, for small components to combine in stages over millions of years.

As you see, the single point that makes it impossible for the first cell to have formed is not the insufficient conditions on the primordial Earth, but the fact that the cell's intricate structure could never arise by coincidence. Therefore, how should something that cannot possibly occur on Earth be able to take place in space?

What is in the heavens and in the Earth belongs to Allah. Allah encompasses all things.
(Surat an-Nisa', 126)

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